


and yet, never grows

by TolkienGirl



Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [252]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Angband, Gen, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Misogyny, Other, Plotting, Post-the recent Maeglin fic, Villains Unite!, mentions of Ancalagon, title from the Hobbit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 19:14:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,221
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24620671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TolkienGirl/pseuds/TolkienGirl
Summary: Gothmog returns to Diablo as emissary.
Relationships: Gothmog (Lord of Balrogs) & Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor, Gothmog (Lord of Balrogs) & Sauron | Mairon, Morgoth Bauglir | Melkor & Sauron | Mairon
Series: All That Glitters Gold Rush!AU: The Full Series [252]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1300685
Comments: 2
Kudos: 9





	and yet, never grows

“I didn’t climb this goddamned mountain for nothing,” he says mildly. “You can tell him I’m waiting, and if he don’t want to come, I’ll shoot my way in. That’s a promise.”

The guard—not one of his, or what used to be his—narrows his eyes but doesn’t argue. Why would he? He’s got a shaky hand, likely knows it, and Gothmog already has a gun leveled at his breastbone.

Gothmog’s hands don’t shake. Hell can rise and call repentance; he’ll go gladly. Everyone has a time to die. Knowing that just makes the killing easier. The flesh and money sweeter.

Guard gone, he waits. Air’s cold. Not winter-cold—he’s been through blizzards—but part of his body is bound to the South, and that’s what he measures time and tempest against. He waits. He breathes. He has a pipe and tobacco in his pocket. When they’ve let him in, he’ll smoke.

And they will let him in.

Dust, filtering down from the pale sunshine. You could see it at the right angle of light. Dust, city-stench, different kinds of laughter. He’d been in old Diablo’s shadow too long.

 _Glaurung will be my overseer_ , she said. She was a woman, and an ugly one, but men were afraid of her. He could respect that. _You’ll be Bauglir._ My _Bauglir._

He had smiled without meaning it. Not because he couldn’t take pleasure in power—he could—but because this didn’t give him pleasure. Not yet.

 _What do I tell him?_ He asked, talking polite.

She drummed her ugly hand on her desk. _Everything but that. He still needs to think himself useful._

She is very clever. Gothmog still thinks that. She has also shown one spot of blindness. Bauglir is a fool, it’s true, but he is at the top of a mountain because he is also more than a fool.

It is important to know that.

The same sort of thought could chase down others. Could have killed them, if allowed.

The guard comes back. ‘Course he does.

“I’ll lead you in,” he says, as if Gothmog doesn’t know the way. As if they’ve had the time to make this path a secret one, to his eyes. No, they can’t have had much time at all, if the tales he’s heard are true.

On the road here, he ate and drank. Left one girl gasping for life and breath on her belly. Beat another for the color of her hair.

He’s had a good deal of time to think. He reckons he’s in a position of strength.

Place looks worse, inside. Bauglir is more than a fool, but he’ll be a dead monster, all told, if a thousand tons of heaven come down on his whale-boned body. Gothmog laughs to himself, in the way that _he_ laughs best: no sound.

There was so much Goodley had to say. So much to fit within these empty halls. What did it look like? What did it _sound_ like?

Goodley’s a quiet man, but money or blood can bring things out of him. Then, too, there was the scrap of a brat—Gothmog laughs again inside, for the brat—and between the two, they gave a thousand words for the world upended.

“Hoy there,” Gothmog calls, quite cheery, when he sees Bauglir’s shadow, standing out.

“Cosomoco.”

“You thought I was dead meat, eh?”

“I am a little preoccupied today,” Bauglir says, his voice gentleman-restrained, his eyes so blank and deep that Gothmog remembers why some people fear him. “I am expecting an illustrious visitor from the north.”

“ _Illustrious_.” Gothmog draws out the word. There are more ways to enjoy oneself than with a whore—willing or unwilling—or with a redheaded slave. This is one of them. “I like the sound of that. For meself.”

Bauglir’s eyebrows crawl up his face.

“Old lady sends her regards,” Gothmog says. “Liked your little gift of the _laddie_. She’ll have him making guns. You planned that, didn’t you?”

“You fled,” Bauglir says, not answering the question. “How good it is to know, that you fled with purpose. But come, let us discuss all plans where we can be seated—where you can have something to eat and drink.” With a wave of one long, white hand, he gestures towards the windowed study. 

Inside, Mairon is half there and half gone. It’s a wonder to see. Gothmog grins from ear to ear.

“Poked you, did they?” he says at last, chuckling. He doesn’t sit down—he lets Bauglir do that. He has no intention, either, of eating or drinking what’s put before him.

Mairon says nothing. Then he moves, and moves with his knife.

Gothmog has a gun on him before he draws in another lungful of thin air. The whole room freezes, colder than this winter is or will ever be.

“I came to talk business, you dung-bellied rat,” he drawls, finger caressing the trigger. “You lost one, I’ll shoot the other out and hang you by your ankles for the crows to pick at the rest o’you. Stand down.”

“Mairon,” says Morgoth. “Do be civil. He isn’t our rapscallion. Our poor Maedhros.”

Those aren’t, Gothmog thinks, words to placate Mairon, but the man shrinks back. He looks smaller without his wreath of dead skins. Wasted, skeletal, bright with hatred.

A man like that needs to drink blood to be strong. Bauglir must be starving him for a reason.

Gothmog puts his gun away. “So you lost him?” He asks. “Poor Maedhros?”

Bauglir looks at him for a long, long time. “My, my,” he says. “What did she promise you? Cosomoco, you cannot have my mind. My eyes. My heart. Not unless you cut them out—and then what good would they do you?”

Gothmog waits.

Bauglir presses three crescent-nailed fingers to his broad chin and continues,

“I have use, she concedes. Her letter mocks, and you mock, and yes, the one-handed harlot would mock, I suppose, were he to have his wits about him. Trust that he does not. And as for you—think what you will, good man. I do not have use, except that I _am_ use. You came to me because you wanted money. She thinks she accommodates my curiosities, my whims, even my agonies, because I can give her power. But do not mistake me, Cosomoco. It is my world. It will always be my world, because I believe in that very truth with such sincerity.”

Mairon growls like a dog growls.

Gothmog stands. “If you won’t pour a man a pint of something fit to be swallowed, then I’m not a man to take up much more of your time,” he says. “I’ll pick something from the larder on the way down. Point is, the locals reg will be happy to work with whatever men you have. San Fran’s ripe for plucking. Already plucked, by her hand. It’s the south we all want. Ain’t that so in east or west, damn me—” He tips his hat. Not out of respect. “There’s your message: take the south.”

Bauglir looks at his dog. His dog looks back.

They are sharing some secret, instead of punishment, now.

Gothmog thinks that’s just as it should be.

He isn’t a curious man. It’s why he’s sitting high up, mountain high, in a position of strength.


End file.
